


Flytrap

by dev_chieftain



Category: Dragon Age 2
Genre: It's a Trap!, M/M, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-05-10
Updated: 2011-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-19 05:45:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dev_chieftain/pseuds/dev_chieftain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a prompt on the DA Kinkmeme: Hawke is captured by blood mages who, through hella strong magic and maybe weeks of brutal conditioning, successfully turn him into their thrall. By the time LI Fenris and co. rescue him it's already too late, and without a specific owner he'll submit to and serve anyone. Unwilling to trust him to anyone else, Fenris takes in Hawke until the magic wears off or someone figures out how to break the hold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flytrap

**Author's Note:**

> I swear updates for all the in-progress stories are forthcoming soon, including this one.

The last thirty days have been an agony measured in panic and self-loathing. Each one of them has their own reason to take credit for their failure to protect Hawke when the blood mages struck; Isabela has been frustratedly massaging her temples, a new bad habit that reminds her of her mother in all the wrong ways. She knows, _knows_ that if she'd just sliced that damn woman's throat sooner, Hawke would have had the time he'd needed to cast defenses against the blood mages' leader, would have had the time he'd needed to back out of range of the bloodmist cloud that had ripped a scream of pure, animal fear out of him before he'd gone unconscious.

But she hadn't, and he is gone.

Aveline blames herself for being brought down by the same magic; Merrill guiltily believes she could have protected him if she'd been closer and not passing out from fatigue herself. Fenris blames himself for not being there. Anders seems dead set on blaming himself for not teaching Hawke more defensive magics, instruction his fellow mage desperately needed.

Varric hasn't said anything on the matter directly, instead pursuing every single glimmer of a lead they could find in the interim. Nothing turned up in those whole thirty days, nothing at all to help them figure out where their enemies had retreated with their missing comrade in arms. To more than one of him, he was almost a little brother. He's younger than any of them; and his enthusiasm for saving the world, even if the world didn't want him, has proven contagious.

What matters the world if they can't save _him_?

Thirty days, and suddenly all the waiting pales in comparison to the sudden attack, in broad daylight, on the Hanged Man. The bloodmages have the nerve to attack on two fronts, striking Anders's Darktown clinic at the same time: have the overconfidence so common among those slowly losing their humanity to the lust for power.

Still, they very nearly succeed in killing Varric, who stares like a fish out of water, unable to respond to the danger of his situation when he recognizes that scruffy, broken thing limping beside the mages' leader.

That thing is Hawke.

That _thing_ is _Hawke._

It's all very heroic and deserving of a retelling that involves less angry screaming, more speeches about friendship, less blood, less blood, less blood. But Varric looses it, and Isabela is daggers deep in the nearest idiot claiming credit for what they've done to Hawke, and maybe the woman at their forefront used to be a part of the merchant's guild but Varric can't remember her name and doesn't care, through the haze of anger that's come down over his eyes.

Varric Tethras does not get angry often.

No one in their right mind would ever want that to change.

Ultimately, with the bar burning down around their ears and the patrons, Norah, Corff fleeing out into Lowtown's streets with shrieks, demanding if he is crazy, Varric manages to seem frighteningly calm. Isabela, helping people evacuate, grabs Norah before she's quite gone past the door, whispering to get to Darktown in case the healer might be able to put out the flames and save the bar. She nods, shortly, and does.

Meanwhile, Varric is slinging Bianca across his back, and takes Hawke's unresponsive, mangled right hand into one of his little stubby-fingered ones. The mage's eyes don't track, don't focus, and Varric seems to crumple in on himself. He speaks very softly, as one speaks to a child.

"Hawke," and he squeezes Hawke's hand gently. "You can't be like this. I can't--"

Some choked sound. Isabela later pretends she heard none of it, because the only way she can deal with the feeling that she's going to throw up is by rushing into the back rooms, making sure no one is in them, in case Anders does not make it here in time to save the building from itself.

"I'm not going to start carrying a spare crossbow just to remember you by," Varric swears, and it's about the only time he's ever lost complete control in all the years since he's met this damn upstart kid. "You're gonna have to get better."

Hawke blinks slowly, and then crouches down like a dog, letting Varric hold his hand, looking at him intently as if waiting for a command. His eyes never come into focus, as though there isn't really anyone there anymore, but he waits, patient as a mabari, silent and still, and there is some slight twitch of fear or pain in his expression when Varric lets go his hand to cover his eyes, laughing brokenly.

"What a month," he hisses, when Isabela finally can't excuse leaving them in the bar any longer and grabs them both by their arms, dragging them out. Hawke is unresisting, though he seems unsure about whether he is meant to be walking or crawling at first; Varric shrugs free of her grip, walks out on his own power, and disappears in the direction of Hightown with a vaguely threatening promise to be back later.

Left with Hawke, or the shell of what once was Hawke, Isabela steals away to the alienage. It's the only place she can think of to put him that won't draw attention. Luckily, no one seems to have noticed him while they were fleeing for their lives. And maybe Merrill--

Maybe Merrill can do something.

It's late, late that night, on the thirty-first day, when everyone finally makes it to Merrill's house. Anders drags himself in last, soot-stained and weary with healing and fighting and healing and trying to put out the worst of the flames in the Hanged Man before the authorities arrived. That they saved most of it is small consolation.

No one comments on Varric's decision to torch the place. They are all of one mind: it ensured the bloodmages' death. It was worth it.

Hawke is sitting in one of the chairs Merrill keeps around the place, obediently waiting, and for a long time they stand in uneasy silence, just watching him. None of them are particularly good at keeping their tempers. Anders is holding his head desperately, as if that gesture will keep Justice in check. Aveline is red with fury, and Fenris is glowing. In a way, it's almost a pity there's no war to start, no one else to track down and punish for what's been done.

Haggard though she is, Isabela relates the details they've learned while Merrill offers Anders a lyrium potion. He takes it gratefully, and kneels beside Hawke, shutting his eyes as much to look away from that vacant expression as to concentrate on healing what can be healed.

"They've shattered him." Isabela's voice is low and more serious than most of them have ever heard her. "It's blood magic, but there's more to it than that. The hurts on him-- they had a lot of things to say to him before they went on and did whatever the magic is."

Fenris hisses, clearly wanting to yell at _someone_ for leaving the magic upon Hawke's mind, but Merrill interrupts, picking up where Isabela had left off. "It's not anything I have experience with. I spent most of the afternoon studying it, but-- there's certain kinds of blood magic that use very old rituals, and I'm not familiar with those beyond a few stories. I- can't be sure, but I think that's what's happened, here."

"What," Varric speaks up at last, sounding much older than he usually does, "exactly _has_ happened to him?"

"They made him a thrall," Isabela growls, rubbing at her temples for calm that doesn't come. "He'll do anything if you phrase it like a command. Merrill tried using his name, and..."

"Don't," Merrill warns them. It's not hard to see that she's making the suggestion as a kindness to them, more than anything else. "If you can help it, you really don't want to use his name."

Anders, meanwhile, is shaking, blue light dancing through his skin, dangerously close to bursting free. He shouts, and whispers (Anders shouting, Justice whispering) " _We can't fix this._ "

"Try, you coward!" Fenris snaps, and it takes Aveline, Varric and Isabela to hold him back before he does something needlessly stupid. Ultimately, they have to drag him outside, and he paces back and forth-- Varric joining him with a solemn nod as they wait for Anders to finish what little he can do for Hawke. Varric is thinking grimly of the mage's mangled hands.

By the middle of the night, Aveline has to return home, asking Varric to send her news once they have news to report. He promises to pay her the cost in damages on the Hanged Man, which she tiredly accepts without any of her usual teasing banter. Isabela, likewise, drags Varric off, making him promise to help her break the news gently to Leandra, Bodahn and Sandal. He even manages to muster up a weak laugh, adding Jacknife to the list because mabari are people, too.

Fenris stays, pacing, until the night grows very cold and he has to stand leaning into the wall of Merrill's house, holding himself tightly, shaking with rage. When the door opens, Merrill looks paler than usual, and he can see she has inscribed wards throughout the house to protect Hawke there.

"Well?" he asks, when he has battened down his blind hatred of magic enough to recognize that, without Anders, Hawke would still be bleeding sluggishly from that small puncture wound in his throat, would still have hands that bent wrong, still be breathing with that odd heavy wetness that means something is broken.

Anders is curled up in a corner, face buried in his knees. He mutters the diagnosis defiantly. "Crushed his hands and broke his fingers. The limp was a missing kneecap; they sheared it off. Internal bleeding enough I'm surprised he hadn't died. Concussions, missing teeth, cuts all along his right arm. They were using him for their rituals, once they finished squeezing the life out of him."

The pause that follows is tense, and Anders relents first, sighing. He sounds pessimistic at best.

"I've never known a thrall to remain-- controlled after the mage using them was killed. I'm not sure what's controlling him. No way to really know what they did to his mind except try to fix it so he can tell us."

"Did you try?" Fenris asks, surprised by the lack of venom he manages in those very, very important words.

Anders meets him with equal calm. "Yes. I've never dealt with this sort of thing before and I'm too tired to make sense of what I did see. I'll be trying again tomorrow."

"Very well." Satisfied, he is about to turn to leave-- he hardly feels like he belongs here-- when Fenris is stopped by the mage's voice calling his name. Puzzled, he glances back, looming in Merrill's doorway. The bloodmagic symbols on the walls hardly make him comfortable. More bloodmagic is unlikely to solve this. "What?"

"He needs someone to take care of him in the meantime." Anders's weary expression suggests the idea is both distasteful and practical to him, and he hates it for both reasons. "You're unlikely to use magic in front of him and set him off if something's gone badly wrong in his head, but you're also rather well defended when it comes to that. You'd be the best choice."

"I am also the least weary of the three of us," Fenris points out readily.

A small, thin-lipped smile is his only answer to that, as Anders abruptly changes the subject, staring over his shoulder at their unmoving, docile friend. "You should know what happens if you do slip and use his name."

"I should?"

"Watch." And then, Anders pitches his voice a little louder, a little higher, trying not to sound utterly disturbed and failing spectacularly. "Hawke, come here."

 _Life_ returns to that body, to those eyes, and adoration floods him, seeps off of him as he scrambles to the floor, crawling hastily over to be between them, looking at Anders with rapt attention. "I am here, ser" he breathes, and bows his head in servitude.

Fenris is more repulsed than he could have thought possible, and despite himself curses irritably. "Hawke! What are you doing?"

Hawke's whole body trembles as he turns from Anders to Fenris, with some kind of pain that can't be seen by mortal eyes. His head falls forward, motor controls seemingly deteriorated by the change, and for a moment drool leaks from his lips in a thin line, until he seems to acclimatize and his head jerks back up, his lips smiling, his eyes blank. "Whatever you command, ser."

"It's better if only one person's imprinting on him," Anders explains, even as Fenris has to fight with himself not to reach out and grab the mage by the front of his robe, demanding he fix Hawke _now._ If it were possible, he doesn't doubt Anders would have done it, and contents himself with that feeling as he tries to avoid catching sight of Hawke's dormant gaze, his subservient posture. "When someone uses his name it transfers him to that person or something like that. New master, new rules, new set of conversations. Every time he switches over he has a little seizure, like you saw."

"And it's harming him further," Fenris ventures. The very idea makes his stomach sink with misgiving.

"Yes." The answer is so soft, Anders seems to have drifted away for a moment. He certainly looks like he needs it. "You'll be safe for him. Until we can fix it." And then, grimly: " _If_ we can fix it."

Fenris leans back against the wall of Merrill's house, watching Hawke's expressionless eyes. The lack of thought or emotion there will kill him as surely as it kills any of them, but if there’s any chance Fenris can protect him from further harm-- "All right."

Because if he'd been there, maybe none of this would have had to happen.

"...lie down," he tells Hawke in a softer tone, motioning for the younger man to rest his head in Fenris's lap, and Hawke obediently does so, smiling up at Fenris in a perfect, almost unnerving parody of human adoration. "Sleep, Hawke," he whispers, when he is able again to speak at all.

The night is long, and cold. They none of them speak, though all three are aware, barely able to catnap with their attention focused on Hawke's even breathing. The morning brings no good news.


End file.
